Man From Mustang

by Brand, Max

  “When it comes to the trial, this here Holman, he puts up a cock-and-bull story about how the two thugs had come to his house in the middle of the night and forced him at the point of a gun to go to the bank with ‘em and open the safe, and how they’d kept him under their guns, and made him run with ‘em, and how he’d taken the first chance to get hold of a revolver and shoot the pair of ‘em. And why did he run when the sheriff came up after him? Well, it was because all of the swag was on him, and he seen that it would be hard to explain things away and prove that he was an honest man. It was a pretty far-fetched story, and the whole jury, it busted out laughin’ in the middle of the yarn, they say. So they made him guilty of murder, and there you are!”

  Silver had listened attentively to this story, and now he nodded his head. “What that has to do with Lorens,” he said, “I don’t know. But Lorens has a lot of interest in that fellow Holman, I think. Now, Harry, there’s one thing more for me to say to you. I’m going back up the valley. I’m going to be in Kirby Corssing for a while, and then I’m going on. Every day I’m going to try to get in touch with you. If I don’t manage that, I want you to start on the trail for me, because it may be that I’ll be needing help. Will you do that?”

  “I’ll do it glad and willing,” answered One-eyed Harry. “You’re going back into the fire, are you?”

  “This one job is the last one, but I’ve got to finish it,” said Silver uneasily.

  He stood up.

  “Try to keep people away from Parade,” he cautioned. “There are more men who know that horse than there are who know me. And if Parade is spotted, people will know that I’m not far away — and that will complicate everything. This disguise business is thin ice to skate on, and it won’t take much to make me break through. I’ll put Parade in the woods, and he’ll stay there till I come back. Just see that he has water and grain. And so long, Harry.”

  Harry followed his friend out into the night.

  “I hate to have you go, partner,” said he. “It seems to me that there’s a lot of trouble pilin’ up in the air around us.”

  “Perhaps there is,” said Silver. “But this is the last time for me, Harry.”

  “The last time you hunt trouble?” echoed Harry. “You couldn’t stay away from it. No more than a dope fiend can stay away from his dope. But so long, Jim. Will that hoss stay there without no hobbles, even?”

  They stood together in the dark of the trees near the lean-to, and Silver spoke to the horse and patted the silk of the neck.

  “He’ll stay here till he hears me call or whistle,” said he, “I think he’d stay here if the brush were set on fire. But your job, old son, is to keep people away from this neck of the woods during the day. Mind you, if anybody puts an eye on the horse, I’m next door to a gone goose!”

  Chapter 13

  Silver ran back to Kirby Crossing and went to the biggest horse dealer’s yard. It was out on the edge of the town — a little shack of a house, a sprawling shed, and a tangle of corral fences all within sound of the flowing river. The proprietor was eating his supper alone in his kitchen when Silver tapped at the open door and saw a face swollen with fat and redstained by whisky lifted from a platter of jumbled food.

  “How much of a pair of horses do you want?” asked the dealer sharply.

  “Four hundred dollars’ worth,” said Silver simply. “Horses and saddles.”

  The dealer ducked his head and coughed to cover his grin of satisfaction. Five minutes later Silver sat on his heels with his back against a corral fence, and watched a wrangler run half a dozen horses into the lantern light of the inclosure.

  “No, señor,” said Silver. “It is not four hundred dollars’ worth of horse meat that I want, but two horses at two hundred dollars apiece.”

  “Here!” exclaimed the dealer. “There ain’t a pair of this lot that ain’t worth two hundred bucks.”

  But though he blustered, he realized that he was not dealing with a fool. He brought in new selections. It was not until twenty animals had been brought before him that Silver elected to try one. He took the one he tried. And twenty more went before him before he selected its mate. Then he had a good gray and a roan. Neither of them was a picture horse, but each promised to be full of service. It rather amused Silver to note that he was using his best endeavors for Lorens, who would eventually be his open enemy. But the instinct of the bargainer had control of him.

  By the time the horses were secured, the dealer lifted his lantern and shone the light of it into the eyes of Silver.

  “If everybody bought horses like you do, stranger,” said he, “I’d have to go out of business or turn myself into an honest man!”

  Silver took the horses with the flimsy, battered equipment that was included in the sale price, and led the pair to the long hitch rack in front of the hotel.

  It was nearly ten o’clock, so he went to his designated post opposite the hotel and sat down on his heels again, with his back leaned against a wall.

  There were few people in the street. Only about the doors of the saloons appeared the forms of men entering or slipping away. Those lighted doors seemed to be attracting the inhabitants as lamps attract insects on a summer night. But most of the houses down the street were already darkened, because the town dwellers of a small Western community retire early and begin the day betimes. Even in the hotel, only three windows above the ground floor were lighted. And at ten o’clock the veranda was empty, and the hanging lanterns that illuminated it were put out.

  Silver stood up, stretched his cramped legs, and settled down on his heels again. He was perfectly content. Sometimes invisible whirlpools of dust brushed against him, and the taste of alkali came into his mouth. But in his nostrils there was the fragrance of adventure, and the light in his mind was more than lamps could shed.

  The minutes went by him like stealthy feet. It was eleven, or close to that hour. Only a single window in the facade of the hotel was lamplighted. One of the saloons had closed for the night. And Silver, for the third time, lighted a cigarette, scratching two matches, so that both came into a blaze for a moment, though he held them in such a way that none of the light could fall upon his face.

  Then a form came across the hotel veranda and rapidly across the street toward him. The starlight showed clearly enough that it was a woman. After her came a long-striding man, a queerly made, light-shouldered fellow who took immense steps.

  The girl turned sideways from him and started to run. She thought better of it and turned suddenly to face him.

  The two of them were close, by this time, and Silver had slipped back into the thicker shade of an inset doorway, where he was almost invisible.

  He heard the girl saying: “You can’t follow me. You can’t bother me like this, Perry. It’s no good! It won’t do. I won’t have it, Perry. You have no right!”

  “Why, I don’t know,” said the man. “Maybe I have right enough. Maybe I have a sort of duty, Edith, to follow a woman who’s run away from her husband the day of the wedding. Maybe I have a duty to show up a fraud. That’s what the thing amounts to. Fraud, Edith! You deceived a man. You led him on to marry you, and then you ducked out. Plain fraud, and there are laws that deal with it!”

  “You ought to see him,” said the girl calmly. “Go see Ned Kenyon, and ask him to open suit against me.”

  “You’re confident in him, are you?” said the other, sneering. “Edith, there’s no shame in you, apparently!”

  “Shame?” said the girl. “Shame, Perry Nellihan? Doesn’t the word blister your tongue a little?”

  “Why should it?” asked Nellihan. “I’ve done only what any man would do to protect my rights! I was robbed of my rights. And you know it!”

  “Suppose,” said the girl, “that my father had known what you are, instead of merely guessing — what do you think he would have done?”

  “The old fool is dead,” said Nellihan. “I don’t have to think about him. The fact is that he raised me like his own
son all my life, and then he cut me off without a penny! Practically.”

  “More than two hundred thousand dollars — is that only a penny?” she asked.

  “Compared with what you’re getting!” said Nellihan.

  “If I had told father what I knew, he would never have left you even that.”

  “The point is that you didn’t tell him what you knew. That’s where you were a fool.”

  “Very well,” said the girl. “Take your hand from my arm, Perry. I don’t want you to touch me.”

  “I’m not good enough to touch you, eh?”

  “You’re not,” said she.

  “I’ve done my share of shady things, perhaps,” answered Nellihan. “But I’ve never done a worse thing than you worked on that poor idiot of a Kenyon.”

  “I don’t think you ever did,” she agreed, with a sudden warmth that surprised Silver. “But you know why I had to do it. You know that you worked me into a corner from which I couldn’t dodge! There was only that way out for me!”

  “I arranged that pretty well,” said Nellihan. And he laughed.

  Everything about that man was offensive to Silver for more reasons than he could put into words. And the voice, high, thin, nasal, cut into his very brainpan and put his nerves on edge.

  “Take your hand off my arm,” she repeated.

  And the striking muscles in the shoulder of Silver leaped into hardness that refused to relax.

  “Where do you want to go?” asked Nellihan.

  “That’s my affair.”

  “Girl wandering alone in the middle of the night,” Nellihan sneered. “Is your precious thug somewhere around here?”

  Silver could see him turn his head suddenly from side to side in eager curiosity.

  “If he were,” said the girl, “you’d be shaking in your boots.”

  Nellihan laughed again. “You’re wrong, honey,” said he. “I’m no saint, but I’m not a coward, either. And when it comes to gun work, I’m not afraid of any man in the West. You ought to know that.”

  “I only know that you’re detestable!” she exclaimed.

  “Listen to me, Edith,” said he. “You’re trying a hard game, and I can spoil it for you. You’ll have to talk turkey to me.”

  “You mean that I’ll have to talk money to you?”

  “That’s what I mean.”

  “I’d rather give you my blood than a penny of father’s money,” she answered.

  “No matter what you’d rather do,” answered Nellihan, “you’ll have to talk turkey. I’ve got you where I want you, and you’re a poor fool if you think that I’ll let you get out from under before you’ve ponied up the iron men.”

  “You haven’t a finger’s weight of hold on me,” she told him.

  “No?” said Nellihan. “Don’t you suppose that I can put poor Kenyon on your trail? He can make plenty of trouble for you! You’ll disgrace yourself and your family — and you won’t be able to do a particle of good for the dirty rat you love.”

  Silver heard her sigh — a long, long breath of disgust and weariness.

  “I’ve told you before,” she said, “that you can’t do anything with Ned Kenyon. He won’t act against me!”

  “He will, when I show him how much money he can get out of you. He hasn’t enough brains to think in terms of millions, but I can teach him the way of it! I’ll put a match to his imagination and set him on fire. Then he’ll go after you! Before I did that, I wanted to have a talk with you. That’s all. I wanted to show you that you’re in my hands!”

  “I’m not,” said the girl. “For Ned won’t act against me. It’s hard for a poor, creeping snake like you, Perry, to understand that some men may be honorable!”

  “Well,” said Nellihan, overlooking the insults blandly, and going straight on, “let me tell you something. I have another hold on you. Do you know that Sheriff Bert Philips is in this town right now, looking for an escaped crook? Now, then, suppose that I tell him why you’re here? Suppose I tell him that, suppose that he gets on your trail — why, what will happen then?”

  “You won’t do that, Perry,” said the girl slowly. “I know that you’re bad. But you’re not as low as that! You know that my life is smashed to bits. You know that there’s no future hope for me. And you won’t take away my last chance to find a few minutes of happiness?”

  “Won’t I?” said Perry Nellihan. He began his snarling, savage, nasal laughter.

  “Oh, won’t I?” he repeated. “Won’t I squeeze you till I’ve got what I want out of you? Edith, don’t be such a fool! You ought to know me better than that. The next thing I know, you’ll be on your knees, begging. But words don’t matter in my ear, Edith. Hard cash is the only thing that will talk to me!”

  “It’s true,” she said. “And I am a fool to talk to you.”

  “On the other hand,” said the man, “take a calm look at the business and see the simple and straight way out. I’m not going to try to take everything. I’m going to make a fair split with you. I’m only going to ask for what I should have by your father’s will — one half of the whole estate. Your half will be more money than you can spend. You know that. Why should you grudge me my bit?”

  The girl paused, and Silver waited, with tingling nerves, to hear her acquiesce.

  Instead, she said in the same quiet way: “You don’t quite understand, Perry. I’ve done one terribly bad thing. I’ve smashed the life of Ned Kenyon — for a little while, anyway. And that one bad thing is enough. I’m not going to do another. And the worst thing that I can think of would be to turn you loose on the world with money and power in your hands. The very worst thing! Better send a plague into a crowded city than put power in your hands!” She paused an instant. “I’ve told you what I think. Now get away from me.”

  “You’re going to visit the sheriff with me, my dear,” said he grimly. “You’re going straight down the street with me till I find the sheriff, and I know where to look for him. Come along!”

  He turned her with a violent jerk, so that she made a long. lurching step beside him. Then Silver came like a noiseless ghost behind them.

  “Excuse me, señor,” said Silver in Spanish.

  Nellihan whipped about suddenly, and the force of his turn and the driving weight of Silver’s fist combined to strike him down. He bent far backward and then dropped on his side with his arms flung out.

  Chapter 14

  A man who falls like that does not rise suddenly. Silver gave him a single glance, and then said to the girl:

  “Quickly, señorita! The two horses at this end of the hitch rack — the gray and the roan! Take the roan. I have shortened the stirrups for you!”

  She nodded, saving her breath for her running. And, coming up with the hitch rack, she flashed into the saddle like a man, while Silver jerked loose the knot that tethered the ropes. In a moment he was jogging his horse beside hers down the street.

  She had been about to break away at a mad gallop, when he cautioned her:

  “Señorita, a slow horse is never seen, but a galloping horse is a bonfire. All eyes find it!”

  They were turning the corner beyond the next saloon before Silver, looking back, saw the tall form of Nellihan stagger to its feet. They were out of sight around that corner before a sharp, wailing voice began to yammer for help.

  The girl bent forward and turned her face to Silver, as though asking permission to gallop the horse. But he made a signal of denial.

  That was why they went calmly, unseen through the town of Kirby Crossing. Only when they reached the upper valley road would Silvertip let the horses gallop. And as the windy darkness blew into his face, he set his teeth hard and tried to understand what he had just seen and overheard.

  The whole problem remained vague and obscure in his mind, but he felt that this darkness might be that which goes before the dawn. Nellihan, it was plain, had been raised by the rich father of the girl as a member of the family, though it seemed that he had never been adopted. The man was
a rascal, and Alton had suspected it; therefore Nellihan had been cut off with merely enough of an inheritance to support him in comfort. At the same time, Nellihan had managed to use his influence so that the girl’s own inheritance was embarrassed. And that embarrassment had forced her, it appeared, to marry Ned Kenyon.

  At the thought of Kenyon, the hot anger poured through Silver again, and yet, in spite of himself, he was unable to detest the girl as he had done before. Contrasted with Nellihan, she seemed a saintly figure, almost. And furthermore, what the springs of her actions had been he could not understand, and perhaps when that understanding arrived, he would be able to forgive her, in part, even for the blow she had given to poor Ned Kenyon.

  She loved a “thug,” as Nellihan had phrased it. Her life, she had said, was wrecked. She was fighting now to salvage from the ruin a few moments of happiness!

  As Silver turned these words and ideas in his mind, he was more and more darkly baffled. She was young, beautiful, rich. How could her life be wrecked?

  They were almost at the end of the ride when another though struck like red fire through his brain.

  Nellihan! There was a name that began with the letters he was searching for: “Nel — ”

  And why should it not have been Nellihan? The murderer of Buck must have been tied into this great tangle in some way. The whole thing seemed to possess minute inner relations. He ran over the names — Nellihan, Edith Alton, Ned Kenyon, Lorens, Buck, and finally perhaps some vague connections with the escaped convict, David Holman. These people had entered on the stage from various directions and at various points. When would they be combined in such a way that Silver would be able to understand the entire problem?